Archive for the ‘Flybridge Capital Partners’ Category

I’ve done 10 interim CEO / interim COO gigs during the last 10 years. In my view, there are four cases when hiring an interim CEO make sense:

.

.

.

For The First 3 – 18 Months of a Startup: As detailed in this post (which in turn was prompted by a post from Flybridge Capital Partners venture capitalist Michael Greeley’s) there are times when hiring an interim CEO at the formation of a startup makes sense. Adding the experience of a senior, successful entrepreneur to the passion and vision of the founding entrepreneurs can increase the likelihood of the venture’s success. (This is the role I played at Ember Corporation.)

Helping a Founding CEO: Often, later in a startup’s life, a founding CEO can use help. Rather than terminating the founder and “throwing the baby out with the bath water,” a better solution might be to bring in an interim COO to counsel the founder, and – in many cases – to actually (more…)

I agree with venture capitalist Michael Greeley of Flybridge Capital Partners who recently stated that building companies demands great passion, vision and intelligence but “it also helps to have done it before.” He goes on to say that what the marketplace really needs are “senior successful serial entrepreneurs” to serve on the next generation of entrepreneurs’ boards, to open up their rolodexes, and to share what worked and what didn’t work. He ends by noting that, “such mentorship is difficult to find.”

I would like to build on that suggestion; rather than having these serial entrepreneurs simply serve on boards, I suggest that in some cases they should actually serve as the startup’s interim CEO while the company is getting off the ground.

Every startup has a myriad of details and actions that need to be done. Rather than having a board member who simply advises, “You need to do this; and you need to do that,” in many cases the startup would be better served by (more…)

Friends occasionally seek my advice on raising venture capital, knowing I’ve been involved with a range of VC financings – from seed, through A, B, and C rounds, to investments by a “strategic partner,” to venture debt financing, through to trade sales.

Today I pass along four sources of advice – with a bit of my own advice thrown in for good measure – ranging from advice for the person wanting to plan for all their VC rounds as they are just starting out (analogous to the plan-ahead friend seeking advice on the process of finding that perfect person to marry,) to advice for the person just days from making a big VC pitch (analogous to the last-minute friend seeking advice the night before he’s going to propose!)

So whether you’re the long-range planner or the last-minute proposer, maybe you’ll find one of these right for you.

“Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur” by Dermot Berkery

Dermot’s advice is for the long-range planner. Dermot was the first person my wife Jules and I met when we landed in Ireland on the first of April 2001. Gratefully, he didn’t immediately laugh when we told him our plan to move to Ireland without jobs – “On spec?” he asked – with our 6, 9, and 12 year old boys. Rather he copped on right away that this was not an April Fools Day joke. Months later, a fellow Irish VC described Dermot thusly: “Des, Dermot’s an oxymoron because he’s both a (more…)

Every CEO with a Series B coming up in the next 6-12 months would be wise to use this post from Jeff Bussgang (General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, formerly known as IDG Ventures) as the ‘roadmap’ for his or her actions. Instead of learning what VCs will require from trial end error, using Jeff’s roadmap would allow a CEO to provide — on their first Series B presentation — exactly what the VC expects. And rather than waiting until the Series B time arrives, the CEO should today put a list on the wall of Jeff’s required items; then put together an action plan to obtain each item over the next six months.

Preparing a company for a Series B (which I’ve done a number of times, often in the role of interim CEO / COO) reminds me of preparing for a ‘phase review’ when I was a product manager years ago. Though some people dreaded preparing for such a phase review, I found that — if my product development program (including the go-to-market component) was under control — then providing all the data requested at a phase review was not difficult.

Similarly, for a start-up company, the data Jeff says is required for a Series B is really the data you should normally have to operate the business in the Series A phase: an accurate sales pipeline; customer references; a product road map; financial projections; market analysis / potential, etc. are really all things that should be part of your normal operations. If that’s the case, then pulling together the Series B package will be a reasonable process.

If you’re a CEO facing a Series B in the next year save yourself a lot of pain and heartache and follow Jeff’s advice.